


In Mulieribus

by RembrandtsWife



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bisexual Harry Potter, F/F, F/M, Gender or Sex Swap, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Written Pre-Deathly Hallows, Written Pre-Half Blood Prince, bisexual everybody really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 19:19:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7476615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RembrandtsWife/pseuds/RembrandtsWife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Voldemort thought he had found a curse worse than torture or death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Mulieribus

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written in the long-ago days when I shipped Harry/Snape and Snape/Hermione and never used smushed pairing names. It was written after I had tried and failed to get through Order of the Phoenix and before the Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows had been published, so it diverges far, far from the canon now. Madame Hooch's first name had not been established, and Matthew Lewis had not yet made his triumphant passage through puberty. Nevertheless, I still like it well enough to find it worth sharing. If you like my sort of thing, this story is the sort of thing you might like. *g*
> 
> Note: Harry and his friends are aged twenty in this story.

The Siege of Hogwarts (as historians later called it) had lasted five days before Harry came out of the castle to face Voldemort in what the Daily Prophet would label "the Final Duel". He had his wand in his hand and his comrades at his back, teachers, students, and former students of Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft. Minerva McGonagall walked with him, and Severus Snape, and Corva Sinistra. Filius Flitwick was there, and Artemisia Sprout, Bill and Charlie Weasley, the Weasley twins Fred and George, and of course Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, Harry Potter's closest friends. There were others besides, all armed, all tired, all determined to do their best against Voldemort in one final battle.

None of them ever imagined it would not be the last battle at all.

The offices of the Ministry of Magic had been openly occupied by Death Eaters for months. Diagon Alley and the other streets of magical London lay deserted, except for Knockturn Alley, whose denizens caroused day and night in celebration of the Dark Lord's imminent victory. Death Eaters were in Durmstrang training students in magical combat techniques. Beauxbatons had fallen, its students dispersed to the nearest villages and smuggled one by one to safer locations. In the western hemisphere, wizards and witches from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego were practicing their curses, gearing up to meet an onslaught from Europe.

In Scotland, it was the day before the winter solstice, and Harry Potter walked down the steps of the main entrance of Hogwarts with his little army behind him. His robes snapped in the wind, a raw damp wind that swiftly chilled him until he could barely feel the wand in his grip. In the wan grey light of late afternoon, the space between the steps and the lake was filled with rank upon rank of black-robed, white-masked Death Eaters, wands raised to strike.

But no one struck against Harry Potter. No one cast the first curse. Instead, a ripple went through the rows of dark wizards; the mass parted, and Voldemort himself glided forward, accompanied by his two chief lieutenants: to his right, Lucius Malfoy, and to his left, Lucius' son Draco.

The trio stopped at the foot of the steps. From the depths of his hood, the red eyes of the Dark Lord gleamed up at Harry. "So at last it has come to this." Magically amplified, the Dark Lord's voice reverberated over the grounds of Hogwarts, causing the unicorns left in the Dark Forest to run wild and the centaurs to cover their ears. Harry and his friends merely winced.

"At last we meet in open conflict, you and your followers against me and mine. On this day, the strong will finally prevail over the weak, and Europe will be in my grasp. Tomorrow, the West!"

Harry coughed. "Cut out the evil overlord speeches, Riddle, and just cast a curse, if you're up to it." He yawned, contemptuous as a cat. "I'm tired of you and your rubbish."

The first Avada Kedavra bounced off Harry's spell-shield like a rubber ball. Hermione Granger grinned at Minerva McGonagall--they had done the research that built the shield. Undaunted, Voldemort and the Malfoys began tossing curses like confetti, great ones and small ones. The great ones weakened the spell-shield maintained by the defenders so that some of the small ones got through. Corva Sinistra fell to a Petrificus Totalis, her wand still in her hand. Filius Flitwick got turned into a butterfly, and Artemisia Sprout into a tree, in whose foliage Flitwick hid. A slick curse bound to the common colour of their hair dropped all the Weasleys at once, leaving them gasping as if heavy weights  
crushed their chests, and Draco Malfoy smiled. His father Lucius turned and whispered something into the Dark Lord's hood.

Harry felt the spell-shield shatter before anyone else. As it gave, he plunged down the steps, wand raised. Granger and Snape were at his heels. Even as Harry summoned the words that would separate Tom Riddle's corrupt spirit from his body, Voldemort stepped forward from between the Malfoys father and son, took aim, and hissed a few words in Latin.

"Mulier in mulieribus esto te!"

The spell hit Harry like a kick in the groin, and he fell, breath rushing out of him, as everything turned into a wash of violet light.

***

"Harry? Harry, can you hear me?"

The voice was Madame Pomfrey's. That meant he was in the infirmary at Hogwarts, not at St. Mungo's or, worse, a Muggle hospital. He tried to open his eyes.

He had a confused impression of the wings of Madam Pomfrey's veil, leaning over him. Everything looked... the way it used to before he put his glasses on, first thing in the morning. But he had had his vision corrected once he moved out of the Dursleys', almost three years ago. He shut his eyes, groaning.

"Harry? Can you speak? How do you feel?"

He forced his eyes open again. "I--I'm all right." His voice sounded very strained, higher than usual. "Head hurts. And I can't--see very well. Everything's... blurry." He coughed. "Thirsty."

"Yes, of course. Here you go."

A straw bumped his lips, and he sipped eagerly. The cool water drove away some of the headache but enabled him to notice that he ached all over, as if he'd had a particularly rough Quidditch match the day before. What the hell had that curse been, anyhow?

"Where are the others?" He licked his lips and groped in his mind for the names, all the names of the people who were important to him. "Hermione... Ron... Snape, the other teachers...."

"Everyone is fine, Harry." Madame Pomfrey's hands were roving his head, his face, his chest, checking him out. His chest felt heavy, it was hard to breathe. "You are my only patient right now."

He struggled for a breath. "The Death Eaters?"

"Have fled. All gone." She turned away, he thought, and made noises at the bedside table.

"Is he dead, then?"

Pomfrey didn't have to ask who "he" was. "We're not sure, exactly. But the battle is over, and we appear to have won. You should rest, Harry."

The straw bumped his lips again and he sucked, realizing too late that it was not water, but a potion. He hardly had time to grimace at the taste before he was asleep again.

***

The next time he woke, there were other voices.

"Someone is going to have to tell him."

"He's too weak."

"If he's to make a decent recovery, he must know."

"Shush! or he'll hear you."

Murmuring, too low for him to hear. Was it really Snape arguing with Pomfrey? Then a voice he was sure of, loud and clear.

"I'll tell him." Hermione.

He prised his eyelids up and found her sitting on the edge of his bed. When he raised a hand, she took it firmly in her own and held it.

"Hermione." Just saying her name felt good. She'd always been a true friend, never blown hot and cold like Ron. Where *was* Ron? Why hadn't he come to visit?

"Harry, I have something to tell you."

"Okay." She was smiling at him, her eyes fixed on his.

"You're still weak and shocky from the curse Voldemort cast on you. It was a very old, very rare and unusual curse. Do you remember what he said?"

Harry cast around through the haze of purple that was his memory of the final confrontation. "Mulier... mulieribus...."

"'Mulier in mulieribus esto te'," Hermione said, without any special inflection. "Do you know what that means, Harry?"

He tried to smile. "You know my Latin's... not as good as yours."

"It means 'Be thou a woman among women'." Hermione squeezed his hand. "Harry, he's turned you into a woman."

***

The next time he woke up, Hermione was still clutching his hand, Madame Pomfrey was hovering anxiously over him, her veil fluttering, and at the foot of the bed, Snape was glaring at him, arms folded across his chest. Oddly enough, that familiar glare put heart into him. It couldn't be that bad if Snape was still glaring at him.

"What happened?"

"You passed out from the shock," Snape drawled.

Hermione and Pomfrey both glared at Snape. Harry shook his head and regretted it--it made him feel a little nauseous.

"I mean, what happened with the curse?"

"I've been doing research," Hermione answered promptly. Of course you have, Harry thought, and tried to listen. "It's called the Mulieribus Curse, and it dates from quite a long time ago. It was first used in--"

"Miss Granger." That was Snape. "Just give him the basics, will you? Before he passes out again."

"I won't pass out," Harry said, though he was resisting the urge to grab his crotch and find out what was missing.

"In any case," Hermione went on, with a toss of her head, "it's very old, it was sometimes classed among the Unforgivables, it was meant to, well, to 'un-man' one's opponent--"

"--And as far as we know," Snape said, with grim relish, "it isn't reversible. Except, of course, by the one who cast it."

"Not bloody likely," Harry murmured.

"We're working on that," Hermione assured him, squeezing his hand again. "Minerva and I, that is. It's obviously a type of transfiguration, so we expect there must be a way to reverse it. It's just never been found."

"All right, that's enough talking for now." Harry recognized Madame Pomfrey's "visitors must leave now" tone and squeezed Hermione's hand before pulling away. "You may come back after dinner, Miss Granger, but just to visit. *Not* to discuss the particulars of your research, understood? Now shoo."

Harry found himself wondering if Snape would come to visit, too.

***

"I can't stay in bed any longer, Madame Pomfrey! I've got to get up!"

"But, Harry--"

"Is there any *medical* reason why I shouldn't leave the infirmary?" He glared at her through his newly acquired glasses.

Madame Pomfrey opened her mouth, shut it, and then relented. "No. You've recovered your strength, and you are a *young woman* in perfectly good health. Allowing for the fact that the curse undid your eye correction, but we've been able to get you spectacles for now." At least they weren't as cheap and ugly as his old ones had been. "I just want you to be sure you're ready for what awaits you when you leave this room."

"What's that? Being stared at?" Harry laughed. "I've lived with that all my life. Before I came to Hogwarts, it was because I was Dudley's freakish orphan cousin. Afterward, it was because I was the Boy Who Lived." He shrugged. "Now I'm the Boy Who's a Girl. Big deal."

"As you wish, Harry." Madame Pomfrey opened the drawer of his bedside table and brought out a bundle topped by his green robe, the one he'd been wearing during the final duel. She placed it on the foot of the bed. "Hermione took the liberty of bringing you some... more suitable clothes."

Drawing the curtains around his bed, the mediwitch left him alone.

For the first time in three days, Harry swung his feet around and put them on the floor. He stood up, wobbled, and sat down again. Everything felt... wrong. His center of gravity was different. He felt the gap between his legs more than before, even more than when he'd pissed into a bedpan instead of into the usual jug, like a man. His scalp itched--his hair was dirty--and he scratched at it. Did women scratch their heads? He couldn't think of himself as female.

He tried standing up again. All right, that was better. After a moment he shed the thin hospital gown that was all he wore--why hadn't someone brought his jammies?--and stood naked, afraid to look down at himself. It was so chill in the room that he started shivering, and that made him wrap his arms across his chest, and that made him look down.

He had breasts.

They weren't big huge floppy breasts like Millicent Bulstrode's. He'd been kind of picturing that as he drifted in or out of sleep, oversized boobs on his thin, nearly hairless man's chest. No, they were pretty small, actually, and the few hairs he'd had were gone. The nipples were kind of big, and a dark rosy brown.

Biting his lip, he cupped his hands over the breasts. Yow! The nipples were a lot more sensitive now--they shoved up into his palms like baby birds demanding to be fed. He decided he'd better not yield to the temptation to stand around in the infirmary twiddling with his nipples. But still... he had to know.

He slid a hand down his stomach, between his legs. Oh, God, this was weird--no stalk of a penis at the base of his belly, no balls rubbing against the insides of his thighs. In fact, there was a huge space between his thighs, it felt like. But it wasn't like there was *nothing* there. He had pubic hair, same as before, and underneath the short hair was a cleft that felt like the cleft of a peach. He felt a little tremor, pressing his finger there, and carefully parted the lips with one finger. Oh, yes, there it was--a clitoris. Tiny, but powerful. Hermione had mentioned once that the clitoris had as many nerves in its small space as the head of the penis. For some reason, this information had caused Ron to run out of the room, gagging.

Okay, he wasn't a eunuch or a mannequin or whatever. He was--a girl. At twenty, a woman. Different equipment, but still, equipment. Deep breath, chin up, and so on. But he wanted to *see* what he looked like before he put his clothes on.

There was a standing mirror in the infirmary, he knew that. If he could just remember what it looked like.... Harry crept forward and stuck his head out the gap in the curtains around his bed. There it was! If he just had--he fumbled in  
the top drawer of the bedside table and came up with his wand. "Accio mirror!"

The mirror slid gracefully through the gap in the curtains and skidded to a halt, its smooth oaken back toward him. Taking a deep breath, Harry grasped the mirror by the frame and turned it round.

His face turned bright red. But it was *his* face. The same unruly black hair he had been letting grow out--it was just long enough for a tail. The curse scar was still on his forehead, livid from his recent encounter with Voldemort. The same narrow shoulders and long, skinny legs with knobby knees. There were the breasts he had touched; they looked perky. And there was the dark fuzz on his lower belly and the slight dimple of the cleft. He still had hair under his arms and a light dusting over his legs, but no beard stubble. His face felt unbelievably smooth.

"I'm a woman," he said out loud.

Now that he knew, he could tell his voice was different. Higher, he guessed; it didn't sound enormously different to his own ears. He talked the same way as ever, right?

Hearing footsteps, Harry scrambled into his clothes. Hermione's clothes, mostly. The pants were a little large on him, but plain beige cotton--not really embarrassing. He had no idea what to do with the bra--it was *very* large  
compared to his attributes. The trousers were big, too--it was a bit like being a kid and wearing Dudley's clothes again--but they seemed to fit right over the curves. The light blue jumper was no worse a fit than Mrs. Weasley's Christmas jumpers had been, and his own teaching robe went over all.

He twisted his hair back with the tie that had been left in the bedside table, stuck his wand in his pocket and his feet into his shoes, and looked in the mirror again. He hardly looked any different, with the clothes on and his hair pulled back. He was still Harry Potter.

Whistling, he walked out through the empty infirmary, into the halls of Hogwarts. He thought he'd go up to the room he'd been sharing with Ron during the war effort, take a shower and wash his hair, see if he could Transfigure his  
clothes to a better fit.

He didn't think Dennis Creevey would drop a vial of something that smoked green and smelled like dead flowers at the sight of him.

He didn't think a seventh-year Hufflepuff whose name he couldn't quite recall would whistle lewdly at him, then choke at a stare from green eyes under a famous curse scar.

He didn't think people would stare as he walked by, bringing back memories of being a scared first-year and hearing his name whispered while incredulous eyes scanned his face for the telltale scar.

He didn't think Ron would act the way he did.

***

"You can't stay *here*!"

It wasn't so much what Ron said as the way he said it. His voice still squeaked sometimes when he got wrought up, and it squeaked now--with indignation, embarrassment... maybe even fear. Ron wouldn't even *look* at him. His best friend of nearly ten years wouldn't meet his eyes. It hurt.

"Well... okay. If it bothers you so much." Harry yanked open a dresser drawer and began pulling out clothes.

"It wouldn't be right, would it?" He could hear Ron swallow. "People would think we were... you know...."

Harry spun around. "In case you hadn't noticed, Ron, I'm queer." Oh, God, his voice was rising, too--a lot higher than Ron's ever would. "So there are probably people who think we've been shagging for a long time, if that's what's worrying you."

He banged the drawer back in and yanked out another one. Behind him, Ron was silent, but Harry could feel his friend's eyes crawling over his back. "It's just really freakish, Harry," Ron said at last. "It's really *weird*."

Harry shrugged. "I've always been a freak, haven't I? This can't be any worse, even if I do have to piss sitting down." He suddenly realized something. "Speaking of which... do you mind?" He cocked his head toward the loo.

Ron turned bright red but shook his head no. Harry squared his shoulders and went in.

By the time he actually sat down on the chilly seat, he thought he was going to burst. What an inconvenience, having to lift up the robes, peel down his trousers, then get the knickers down below his knees, and sit down like that! How did women put up with it?

But once he was in position, his muscles seemed to know what to do. He relaxed, and his body relieved itself, no problems. He wadded up a ball of paper, wiped himself thoroughly, flushed, and washed his hands. No problem.

When he emerged from the bathroom, however, Ron was gone.

He had got down to the staircase with his satchel and suitcase when Hermione came to meet him.

"I heard you got quite a lot of attention on your way up here. And I rather thought Ron might kick you out."

Harry snorted. "Seems he was worried people might think we were having sex. I told him people already thought that."

Hermione chuckled. "He's a stupid git at times, you know that. Don't take it to heart--I'm sure he'll come round." She looked down at his baggage, back up to his face. "You want to come stay with me, for right now?"

"That's brilliant, Hermione. And thanks for the clothes." He opened up his robe to show her he was wearing the outfit she'd sent. "Take one of these, can you? It's all heavier than I remember."

Hermione picked up the suitcase, the heavier object, with a little grunt. "You won't have as much upper body strength as you used to, I suppose. But that's what levitating's for, isn't it?"

Levitating proved to be much easier than carrying. They climbed the stairs to the girls' side of the Gryffindor tower, the suitcase and satchel floating before them, and Harry couldn't help feeling he was trespassing on sacred ground; he'd never been on this side of the tower, never gone along on any of the other Gryffs' pranks, partly out of feeling for Hermione, partly out of being too damned busy with Voldemort.

Hermione's room was a smaller room than his and Ron's, tucked away on the far side of the tower, but when they opened the door, there were two beds in it. "Well, look at that," Hermione said, dumping the suitcase just inside the door. "There was only one bed when I left here this morning. McGonagall works as fast as Dumbledore used to."

Harry swallowed down a lump in his throat. "I wonder what he'd say if he were still here. About this curse, I mean." He shut the door and dropped his satchel.

Hermione sat down on one of the beds. "I think he'd tell you not to be afraid, and to remember that you're still you, and not to pay any attention to what other people do or say."

Harry sat down on the other bed, facing her. "Pretty good advice, even coming from you." They grinned at each other.

Pretty soon Harry's grin faded, however. "How are you feeling, really?"

"Not so different." He rubbed his arm. "Sore from carrying my bags, which is really sad."

"My guess is you don't have any muscle tone, thanks to the curse, but you can get it back, or an equivalent. You don't have to be a weakling just because you're female."

He nodded. "But I still have the scar...." He brushed his hair back with his old gesture. "I don't get the point of the curse, really. I'm still me. I can still do magic--I had no trouble levitating my bag. I'm guessing I'll be able to fly as well as I ever did. I'd feel worse if I were still a man and he'd just cut my wanger off, you know?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "You're not your average bloke, Harry. Trust me on this. Most men would be absolutely devastated and still in bed weeping, if you ask me. Anyway, as I said before, I've already started researching spells and curses that change gender, and what one can do about them. Madam Pince has just let on that there's a whole section of the library down in the dungeons that I never knew about--can you believe it?"

Harry lay back on the bed, comforted by Hermione's rattling on. If there *was* a reversal for the Mulieribus Curse, Hermione would find it. If there wasn't, she'd invent one. The Weasley twins might be able to help, too; they'd been great problem-solvers during the war effort whilst running their new joke shop in London. And with Madam Pince and Headmistress McGonagall and possibly Snape doing some digging....

Hermione caught him just before he dropped off to sleep by saying, "It's almost time for dinner--do you want to shower and change?"

He did. He toughed it out while Hermione showed him the various bottles of potions in her bathroom and what each one was for, then locked the door and grabbed the clean flannel as if taking up his wand to do battle.

First the shampoo. Then the conditioner. Then the soap, also a liquid. It was awkward using the wet flannel on unfamiliar body parts; he was accustomed to just scrubbing himself with soap. 

He discovered that the flannel had to be used to rinse as well as to soap; he could no longer simply hold the dangly bits under the spray, since there were no dangly bits. His nipples perked up embarrassingly just from being washed; he wondered how to make them go away, then wondered why it bothered him, since they'd always been perky before, so to speak.

He thought about trying his usual facial shaving charm on his underarms, then decided he'd worry about that sort of thing later. He toweled himself dry, borrowed Hermione's deodorant since his own was somewhere in his bags, and groped his way out of the bathroom, hoping he'd left his glasses somewhere obvious.

Hermione put his glasses into his hand and, once he had them on, pointed to his bed. "I took the liberty of unpacking for you and seeing what you had and what you'll need. You should be able to wear a lot of your clothes, I think, maybe with a bit of Charming to adjust the fit." She gave him an appraising look that made him wrap his towel across his breasts a little more closely. "You do need bras and women's pants, though, and the best I can do right now is to lend you some of mine and charm them to fit." The look became apologetic. "But to do that, you'll have to put them on."

Harry reminded himself that he had stood up to the world's most powerful dark wizard in repeated encounters, and that he was walking about on two functional legs after the last encounter, following which the armies of the Dark Lord had fled. If he could handle that, he could handle Hermione's seeing his newly acquired boobs.

"All right, then. If you don't mind turning your back."

Hermione did so, moving away into a corner where she wouldn't catch sight of him in the mirror over the dresser. Harry dropped the towel and snagged the plainest bra and pants he saw on the bed. It felt very odd, bending over to put the pants on and not feeling his bits swing with the movement. He then realized he had no idea how to put on a bra. He gulped. "Hermione...."

She turned around and bit her lip, trying not to react right away. Harry's face was as hot as Fawkes on Burning Day, and he saw a matching heat spread across her face. Then she tossed her head and held out her hand for the bra.

"I'm lending you some that close in the front--I thought they'd be easier."

She kept talking, explaining the process, as she got him to lift his arms, wrapped the thing around him, helped him to pull the straps up his arms and shorten them, and fastened the first few hooks. He finished the job and tucked himself into the cups, still blushing.

"It's huge." He had to wonder just how big Hermione's bosoms were.

"Well, of course." She had her wand now and was pointing it at him as she circled him, casting a critical eye on the fit. "I think a simple shrinking charm might do it. It'll help if you concentrate on it, too." She drew herself up and pointed the wand at his chest. "Reducio!"

The smooth beige fabric obligingly shrank up against his skin. For some reason, he thought the breasts were much more prominent in the bra than out of it.

"Excellent!" She repeated the spell on his knickers, then gathered the remaining undergarments on the bed into two neat piles. She touched the bras to his chest, then the pants to his hip, and cast "Replicare". The other garments shrank to match the set he was wearing.

"Well, let's get the rest of your things on, or we'll be late for dinner."

Hermione charmed his trousers and jumper to a better fit, and his shoes as well; his feet seemed to have shrunk a bit. He also realized, as they stood side by side before the mirror, that he was shorter than before. Not by much, as he'd never been tall, but enough to notice.

"I'm betting the curse is genetic," Hermione said. "What you have is the body you would have had, if you'd been born a girl. And women are still, on average, shorter than men. Don't forget to comb your hair!"

Harry combed out his hair with his own comb, finished it off with a drying spell, and pulled on his best robe, in Gryffindor scarlet. "I'm ready if you are."

Walking into the Great Hall for dinner as a woman was no worse, perhaps, than walking into it for the first time as a newcomer to the wizarding world, or as the suspected Heir of Slytherin, but it was no better. The murmuring of "Harry Potter. . . curse. . . girl. . ." followed him all the way up the hall. The worst part was that, being officially junior members of staff (Harry as Assistant Instructor of Flying and Hermione as Assistant Librarian), they normally sat at the high table, as did Ron (Assistant Instructor in Care of Magical Creatures).

Minerva McGonagall sat in the center of the long table, where Albus Dumbledore had once sat. Harry still missed the old headmaster, killed by Voldemort in Harry's seventh year, and he knew McGonagall did, too. Professor Flitwick, as Deputy Head, sat on her right, and Professor Sprout on her left. The instructors who'd come out of Gryffindor or Ravenclaw sat on the same side as Flitwick, and those with Slytherin and Hufflepuff affiliations on the same side as Sprout. Snape, though still Head of Slytherin, usually wound up at the far end of the high table, too far away for Harry to converse with.

The three junior instructors ordinarily sat together at the rightward end of the high table, just as they had once sat together at the Gryffindor table. Ron was in his usual seat, next to Professor Vector, and the dishes were already on the table. It was impossible for Harry to miss the look of sheer panic on Ron's face as he and Hermione approached.

"Bloody hell," he muttered.

"Steady on," Hermione said.

Harry spent the meal with his head down, ploughing through his food and muttering short responses to Hermione's chatter. Even though Hermione had taken the seat nearest Ron, leaving Harry to sit at the end of the table, Ron still appeared to be trying to keep as far away from Harry as possible. He did not, in fact, even speak to Harry once. Harry, hurt and angry, wondered if Ron had ever spoken so much to Professor Vector in his entire time at Hogwarts.

The next morning Harry went out to the Quidditch pitch just after sunrise, his broom slung over his shoulder. It was barely bright enough to fly safely, but he didn't much care. He didn't want anyone to see him try it for the first time since his transformation; he wanted no witnesses if he failed. If he could still fly, then he really was still Harry Potter; if he couldn't fly, well, he wasn't sure what he was going to do about it, but at least no one would see him make a fool  
of himself.

He walked out to what he thought of as his spot on the pitch, the place from which the Gryffindor Seeker rose at the start of the match. Looking up at the low white clouds, pearly grey with a few streaks of pink leftover from the sunrise, he took a few deep breaths of damp, cold air. Then, without too much thought, he slung one leg over his broom and pushed off.

It leaped up underneath him just as it always had, and his legs clamped around it with familiar skill. But he was acutely aware of the broomstick pushing up into the space between his legs, actually pushing right against his clitoris, which was disconcerting. His legs felt weaker than they used to, and his balance had changed. He hoped Hermione was right and he simply needed to develop muscle tone. After all, he'd watched Angelina and Katie play for Gryffindor; there were girls on all the school Quidditch teams, and there was nothing weak about any of them. 

He spent some time just swooping above the pitch in familiar moves, pretending he was looking for the Snitch. It didn't take him long to get his confidence back and try the high-speed moves for which he'd been famous as a Gryffindor player. While he was officially the Assistant Flying Instructor, he unofficially coached any player, of any House, who came to him for help, so he'd kept up his style despite not playing regularly on a team.

I've still got it, he thought, exulting. I've still got it.  
He pulled up high above the pitch, higher than he'd ever gone for a match, wrapped his hands tight around the broomstick, and dove. The wind whistled past his ears, shrieking of the danger, but Harry didn't care; his eyes were fixed on an imaginary Snitch hovering just above the ground in the center of the pitch. He pulled up out of the dive at the last possible instant, his toes dragging the grass, and circled round once, slowing to a halt.

Over his own excited panting, he clearly heard the sound of applause.

"Bravo, Harry. Or should I say 'brava', now?"

He dismounted the broom and straightened as Madame Hooch glided toward him in her mobile chair. A flying accident in his sixth year had cost her the use of her legs; she had not flown since. Her magical abilities remained unimpaired, however, and she had continued to teach though not to referee. She still followed Quidditch as passionately as ever; despite her inability to participate, she never missed a match.

"It was reckless of you, coming out here alone and so early." Her startling yellow eyes dug into him like claws.

"I know." He brushed back his hair and winced; his scar still ached. "I felt as if-if I could just fly, it would be all right-and if I couldn't-"

Hooch nodded. "And you were afraid that you might not be any good at it any more, because you've been changed into a woman."

"Yes." It hurt to admit that in front of Xiomena Hooch, one of the best fliers he'd ever seen, and his own flying teacher. But it was true.

She nodded again. "And is your flying any different?"

"A little." He shifted his broom to his other hand. His hands were sweating inside their oversized gauntlets, now fractionally too large. "Hermione says I just need muscle tone."

"She's right." Hooch regarded him silently for a moment. "Welcome to the other team, Miss Potter. And happy Christmas."

Startled, he could only watch her glide away. She was right; Christmas Day had come without his noticing it.

When he returned from flying to the room he was sharing with Hermione, there were Christmas gifts awaiting him as usual. Hermione was out of bed and in the shower; he knocked at the bathroom door and called to let her know he was back, so she wouldn't come prancing out in the nude and give them both a nasty surprise.

Harry received the usual jumper from Mrs. Weasley (this one was forest green and big for him, but all Molly Weasley's jumpers were big for him); a book on Druid magic from Hermione (they had both become interested in the subject of late); the memoirs of Avalon Wilkerson, one of the most famous Quidditch players of the nineteenth century, from Ron; a tin of sweets from Professor McGonagall, with a note; and, in an unlabelled box, a silver hair-clasp set with a green agate.

Because of the war effort, there were far more students staying at Hogwarts over the hols than was usual, along with quite a lot of adult guests. McGonagall had announced that the Yule Feast would be followed by music and dancing. Hermione tried to talk Harry into wearing a dress for the occasion, but he steadfastly refused, opting instead for his new jumper and his best black trousers, adjusted for his current build. He pulled his hair back with the new clasp.

Ron was with his family at the Gryffindor table, and Harry looked up to see Snape sitting down beside him at the head table with a glass of port. "Happy Christmas, Potter," the Potions Master said.

So, he was just going to avoid the gender issue by using the surname only. Fine, then. "Happy Christmas to you, too." He sipped at his cocoa. He'd considered getting a bit of that port himself, but feared drinking more than his changed body could handle. The Daily Prophet headlines on the subject of a drunken female Harry Potter did not bear imagining.

Snape was silent, watching others dance to the festive seasonal music piped in from Wizarding Wireless. Harry watched Snape, under the pretext of looking past him at the dancers. Hermione was waltzing with Bill Weasley and they were chatting as they circled the floor. Snape had unbent enough to wear dress robes to the ball, in a violet so deep it was almost black, with crimson embroidery; he would never unbend enough to dance, and no one would dare to ask him, not even Hermione.

"If you don't mind," Harry said after about five minutes, "I thought I would come by tomorrow. To resume dueling practice," he added. "Unless you have other plans for the day."

Snape gave him a long stare before responding. For a moment Harry was terrified that Snape would reject his presence as forcefully as Ron had. He wasn't asking for a shag, just to resume his training. "No, I have no other plans. I'll expect you at the usual time, then." He took a long swallow of port. "You're right; we mustn't simply behave as if Voldemort has been defeated. We don't know their status and must be prepared for anything."

"Right." Although none of us was prepared to see me turned into a girl, he thought. Not even you.

"I won't give you any quarter on account of the. . . curse, Potter." There was a malicious glitter in Snape's eyes as he turned them on Harry.

"I wouldn't expect you to." Harry met those eyes over the rim of his mug. "When have you ever given me any quarter?"

And he rose and left the table before Snape could reply.

***

Boxing Day at Hogwarts was quiet, almost sleepy. Hermione betook herself to the library after breakfast in the Gryffindor common room, ready to start researching the Mulieribus Curse in depth, and Harry headed for the dungeons, to Severus Snape's private office.

Snape was waiting for him, dressed in his usual severe black, tapping his wand against his palm. Harry wore another charmed outfit, and the silver hair clasp.

"Shall we begin?" Snape said. Harry assumed the proper defensive posture.

"I'm ready, Severus."

They did the same thing they had done for months, for over a year, since Hermione, Professor McGonagall, and Bill Weasley had developed the hield-spell: Snape cast curses and Harry deflected them, while casting his own curses in return. No longer did one have to dodge physically out of the way of an oncoming spell; the shield-spell blocked everything up to the Unforgivables. It couldn't keep out the Killing Curse or the Cruciatus, but it moderated Cruciatus quite a bit and made most people impervious to the Imperius Curse.

Snape had warned Harry; he showed no quarter, dodging Harry's use of the milder curses with decades of skill and casting all but the Killing Curse on his student. It took practice and no small amount of power to maintain the shield and cast curses at the same time, but Harry found that his power flowed as freely as ever; he felt no weakness, no unexpected tiring. At last Snape backed off, lowered his wand, and bowed, signaling that the bout was over.

"Well done," Snape said, and Harry glowed; that was full marks from a demanding teacher.

Snape, as usual, fixed tea for them both, and Harry gulped his down. He was sweating quite a lot and wondered if he'd remembered his deodorant.

"You look well, Harry," Snape said during their second cup. "You're bearing up."

Harry shrugged. "Mulieribus from Tom Riddle doesn't compare to a bit of Cruciatus from you, in my opinion." He swung his wand arm about. "Though my shoulder does ache."

Snape finished his tea and put the cup down. "McGonagall said we should come up to her office for a conference once we were finished here. Shall we, then?"

"Wish I had time for a shower," Harry muttered, but he followed Snape out of the room.

Professor McGonagall's quill scratched busily over the parchment. Harry was not at all surprised to find the Headmistress working, Boxing Day or no. He *was* surprised to see the Weasley brothers standing in a phalanx against the wall.

"Harry, Severus, do sit down." McGonagall gestured with her quill. Harry did so, glancing, as he still did when in this office, toward the perch where Fawkes had once stood and where McGonagall's owl Finn now dozed. Fawkes had flown away, singing his distress, on the day that Dumbledore was killed, and no one knew what had become of the phoenix.

"Thank you for meeting with me." She scribbled a last few words onto the parchment, then set her quill aside. "The Weasley brothers are leaving today to begin searching in earnest for Voldemort and the remaining Death Eaters. I'm not sure how much you've been told, Harry, since you were--" she hesitated just long enough for him to notice "--in the infirmary--"

"Not much, I'm afraid."

McGonagall folded her hands on her desk. "The repercussions of the curse placed on you affected those nearest to you. We were all quite befuddled for a moment--and Neville Longbottom sprouted several extra nipples--but by the time we recovered (you were still unconscious) the Death Eaters were fleeing the field. None remain on the grounds of Hogwarts or in the immediate vicinity. It falls to the brothers Weasley to investigate the situation in Diagon Alley and elsewhere."

She looked up at the massed body of redheads, and Bill, the oldest, spoke for the others. "We're ready to leave right now, Headmistress. Don't worry, Harry--" He winked at Harry, so quickly Harry almost thought he'd imagined it. "We'll find You-Know-Who and force him to give you back your manhood!"

Fred and George sniggered. Charlie looked exasperated, and Ron turned beet-red. Harry could feel his face getting hot; Bill Weasley had been his first time with a man, one hot lazy summer when they were alone together at the Burrow.

"Just *find* him, Mr. Weasley," McGonagall said, "and find him quickly, if you can. Harry, is there anything you can tell them--have you any clue to Voldemort's whereabouts?"

"I'm afraid not," Harry replied. "I don't have any better guess than anyone else does. My scar isn't even hurting any more."

"Very well, then." She picked up her quill and pointed it at the Weasley brothers. "Good luck to you, gentlemen. I expect regular reports."

"You'll get them, Headmistress," Bill replied. They took her nod for dismissal and trooped out of the office. Ron was still not meeting Harry's eyes.

"Now, as for you two--" Harry straightened under McGonagall's glare-- "I assume you have resumed your duelling practice?"

"Yes, Minerva," Snape drawled, before Harry could say anything.

"Very good. I'd also like you to assist Miss Granger in researching the curse; there may be unexpected solutions in the realm of potions. Harry," she bobbed the quill at him, "Madame Pomfrey wants to see you. Today. And every day. We don't know what other ramifications the curse may have."

Harry gritted his teeth. "Yes, Headmistress."

"That's all, then. I hope I shall see you at dinner."

Madame Pomfrey poked and prodded Harry for some time, but at last she was forced to affirm that he was quite healthy despite his astonishing change. Harry dressed again with ill grace; he was finding women's clothing more troublesome than a woman's body.

"Oh, I almost forgot--" Harry turned in the doorway. "Have you menstruated yet, Harry?"

It took him a moment to apply the clinical word "menstruated" to himself. As soon as it sank in, he went hot in the face again and took an involuntary step backwards. "Er, no, um..."

"Perhaps I should give you some supplies--"

"No, thanks, ask Hermione when I need them, see you tomorrow--" And he ran full out back to Gryffindor tower, portraits upbraiding him as he went.

The rest of the day was spent in helping Hermione with her research, mostly by fetching her books from the shelf, opening late-arriving Christmas presents from friends, and wishing Ron were around. A spin above the grounds on his broom helped a bit, but he still missed Ron. After dinner Harry gathered up his courage and his chessboard and went down to Snape's rooms to propose a game.

To his surprise, Snape greeted him civilly, agreed to a game, and offered him something to drink. Harry accepted a cup of coffee, and they played, mostly in silence, a protracted, intense, challenging game that lasted until after midnight.

The next few days followed the same pattern: dueling and self-defense with Snape in the morning, lunch and research with Hermione (and sometimes with Snape as well), some flying in the afternoons, and a game of chess with Snape after dinner. Snape soon began to push Harry in their self-defense practice just as he pushed him in their chess matches; Harry found himself not only shielding, dodging, and casting curses, but also practicing his Occlumency with more sincerity than he'd felt in a long time, and fending off physical attacks into the bargain.

It was the physical attacks that proved to be the hardest to oppose. For the first time, Harry felt at a real disadvantage as a woman. Snape was suddenly not only taller, but *much* taller, not only heavier but *much* heavier, and his deadliest weapon was his ability to move without telegraphing his intentions. Like a striking snake, Snape went from focused stillness to equally focused speed in the blink of an eye, and Harry never knew which way he was headed. 

So it was that Harry unexpectedly found himself up against the wall, pinned by the other man's full weight, with Snape's wand pointed at his temple and--it couldn't be!--Snape's cock pressing into his belly.

Snape's black eyes glowed with the same triumph they always showed when he got the better of Harry. He opened his mouth, no doubt to gloat--and then shrank away, lowering his wand, and bowed.

"Not bad, Potter, but you don't move as well as you used to. Same time tomorrow?"

It was the first time in over a year that they parted after a session without having tea together.

***

Harry did not go down to Snape's rooms after dinner that night. Pleading fatigue, he retired early to Hermione's room, but when she came up, flushed with hot buttered rum and charades, he was still awake. He heard her enter the darkened room, humming softly to herself, and fumble around undressing. He thought about his borrowed clothes, charmed to fit his scant curves, and about how lush Hermione's figure must be. When he was certain she was in bed, he turned over and spoke, in the sleepiest tone he could manage.

"'Mione? 'Zat you?"

"Ye-he-hesh, it's me," she yawned. "Sorry I woke you." She giggled. "You missed a lovely party. Snape is awfully good at charades, you'd never guess...."

He listened to her settling in, shifting the covers, sighing. He thought about just letting her go to sleep without asking the question that was on his mind. . . he thought about lying awake all night, confused, overwrought, uncertain. . . and he said, "Hermione, I've got to ask you something."

"Mmmm-hm?" She didn't sound cross, but she did sound sleepy.

"How does a woman know if--" He had to stop and take a deep breath, because his heart had started hammering like a kettle full of kobolds. "How does a woman know if, if she wants someone?"

Silence. When she answered, she sounded quite awake. "You mean, if she wants someone sexually?"

"Yeah." He swallowed. "How do you know if you're, um, aroused?"

"Well, it's harder for girls--"

"No, I think it's harder for boys."

She reached across the space between their beds and slapped his arm. "Right. It's not as obvious as when there's a few centimeters of erectile tissue--"

"Hey! It was more than a few centimeters!"

"Sticking out in front of you, leading the way."

"That's why I'm asking. It's not at all obvious, so how do you know?" He rolled over on his side, trying to see her in the dark.

"There are several clues, but they're subtle. It's more the way one feels all over, rather than in one specific part of the body."

She was silent for a moment. Harry could almost *hear* her frowning.

"You feel warm and tingly in his presence, or when you think about him. You think about him a lot, because thinking about him makes you feel good. Sometimes your nipples get hard, and there's--" she paused, searching-- "there's kind of a pulling feeling, in the vagina. Pulling inward, as if it's trying to draw him in. Your clitoris does get erect, you know, but it's much smaller than the penis--though just as sensitive!--so it's not terribly obvious." Another pause. "And if you're really, really excited, you get wet. But you've been with women, so you knew that."

"Uh-huh." Harry caught himself reaching for something that wasn't there--his erection. He guessed that was a sign of arousal, if you were a woman who up until very recently had been a man. 

His hand dropped onto his lower belly, just above where his pubic hair started. He wanted desperately to touch himself and realized he didn't know *how*, or whether it *worked* for a woman same as it did a man. And he wasn't sure if he could bring himself to ask.

He was going to try to ask when Hermione asked a question instead. "Is it Severus?"

"What?"

"Is it Severus? That you think you want?"

"Yeah." Harry sighed. "I still want him, I think. But I don't think he wants me. Or maybe he does--how do I know?"

The other bed creaked as Hermione sat up and folded up her legs. "So why are you asking me all this, now?" she said.

Harry ran a hand through his hair. "Because when we had self-defense practice today, he was running physical attacks as well, and he pinned me up against the wall--and he was *hard*, Hermione."

"Oooohh. . . ." He could almost hear her thinking, too. "So you think you still want him, and you didn't think he'd want you, but now you think he does."

"Something like that. I didn't think Snape had any interest in women. You know how he is--never lets anything show."

"Just because he doesn't let it *show*," Hermione said sagely, "doesn't mean it isn't *there*. He cared about you, didn't he, and never let it show?"

"I guess." Harry shrugged. "I mean, it's not as if we're having a romance, holding hands over an ice cream soda at the Three Broomsticks." Hermione cackled. "It's just sex. We have a good shag, and then off to sleep."

Hermione snorted. "Typical male behavior, that's all. You care about him, don't you? I'd be willing to bet he has feelings for you."

Harry toyed with the fringe on the duvet. "I don't know what I feel, Hermione. I don't know whether I want him. . . or you."

He might have known she wouldn't let him get away with that. Almost immediately, her command of "Lumos!" brightened the room. She was a pink-gowned blur with a honey-brown mane, and memory filled in the shrewd  
expression on her face.

"Harry Potter, was that a line? Are you trying to get me into bed with you?"

He grinned sheepishly. "If it is, will it work? Help me out here, Hermione. It's like I'm a virgin all over again."

It looked like Hermione bit her lip, thinking, and then she was clambering into his bed.

It was awkward and it was funny and it was very, very hot. Kissing Hermione was much like he remembered; she didn't kiss as aggressively as a man, but she knew what she wanted and went after it, unlike most women he'd been with. Her breasts were so much bigger than his, warm and soft under his hands, and he started moaning when he was thumbing her nipple and she started doing the same thing to him. She stroked his arms and his legs and his torso, as if she were stroking a cat, and covered his small breasts with her hands and kneaded them like warm dough, and Harry instinctively spread his legs in response.

"It's funny," she said, lying with her leg between his, her arms around his neck. "You still feel like you're Harry." She dropped a kiss on his collarbone. "You smell the same as you ever did."

"You've noticed how I *smell*?"

"Believe me, it's not the sort of thing a woman misses."

He took her hand and led it down his body, to the unexplored territory between his legs. "Have you ever been with another girl, Hermione?"

"A few." Her fingers threaded into his curls. "But I won't name any names."

"You don't have to. Just show me."

Her fingers eased apart the lips and dipped in. God, he was wet, he *was* wet, that sticky feeling was coming from inside him. Hermione's fingers glided up the cleft, skating on that moisture, and circled around his clit. Green stars burst behind his eyes. "Oh, shit!"

"What?" She jerked her hand away.

"No--" He fumbled for her hand and pulled it close again. "That was bloody fabulous! Go on!"

Her fingers dipped in and repeated their slow, teasing glide. Circled his clitoris and then applied pressure. His hips lifted of their own accord, pressing his clit into her touch.

Hermione bent and took a nipple in her mouth, and kept rubbing his clit while she sucked on it. Harry clutched at her arms and bit his lip and squirmed--the pleasure got sharper and deeper and pulled *in*, and then muscles he didn't know he had seized up inside him. He shuddered and went limp.

Hermione kissed him. "Congratulations, Miss Potter. You've just had your first female orgasm."

***

Harry woke the next morning with a delicious soreness that was both familiar and new. His first orgasm with Hermione's help had not been his last; memories of her fingers on him, *in* him, her mouth at his breasts and his cunt, his eagerness to reciprocate, swam in his mind like slow bright fish. He ran sleepy hands over his breasts, down his ribs, over his hips, and cupped his mound with a new sense of ownership. He hadn't had sex with women enough to realize, before now, just how amazing the female body was. Maybe you couldn't realize it  
unless you were living in one.

He rolled out of bed and skittered naked into the bathroom. The hot water pounded the lassitude out of his muscles, and a quick orgasm with fingers on clit left him ready to take on an opposing Quidditch team by himself, not drained and ready to go back to bed as it used to do. He was trying to whistle when he emerged from the bathroom, half-draped in his towel.

Hermione let out a squeak. So did Harry. Then they looked at one another and began to laugh.

"I suppose there's no use being modest now, is there?" Harry propped one foot on his bed and continued rubbing himself down. "Not when it's just us girls."

Hermione chuckled. "Harry, you're incredible. I'm sure You-Know-Who had no idea you were going to take the Mulieribus Curse like this."

"I couldn't have told him if he'd asked." Harry passed the towel one last time over his hair. "It's rather fun, I think. Can't imagine why some women complain so much."

Hermione tossed a glance over her shoulder as she headed for the bathroom. "Just wait till you get your period."

After breakfast Harry sauntered down to the dungeons for his self-defense practice with Snape. He garnered not a few stares as he swished down the halls, robed in a low-cut dark green number borrowed from Hermione. He hadn't worn anything else yet that was so definitely *feminine*, and it felt rather queer, pun entirely intended. He was in a mood for mischief, however, and he didn't mind feeling queer for the sake of tweaking Severus Snape.

It was obvious, from the look on Snape's face when he came to the office door, that he had not been expecting Harry. Still less, Harry thought, had he been expecting the low-cut green lady's robe and all that it revealed. Snape's eyes dropped to Harry's décolletage, bulged slightly, and then were dragged forcibly back up to his face.

"Must keep up our defenses, right? Constant vigilance, as Auror Moody likes to say." Harry smiled, tilting his head a bit as he had seen Lavender Brown do a hundred times.

"Yes. Of course." Snape stepped back and let him in.

From the first it was plain that Snape was off his game. If he'd been Keeping in Quidditch, Harry's team would have scored big; Harry couldn't recall ever getting past the man's defenses so frequently, so easily. He started toying with Snape, casting silly hexes and jinxes that hurt one's dignity more than anything else. Snape started getting angry when he'd wiped the singing spots off his face for the third time, and for once being angry made him less efficient, not more. He was quite unprepared when Harry physically charged him with all the finesse of a Blast-Ended Skrewt.

Harry didn't try to pin Snape to the wall. He merely toppled him to the floor, straddled his hips, and grabbed for his wrists. To his surprise, Snape let him; he just lay there, chest heaving, wrists held down beside his head, and hard enough to drill granite inside those maddeningly tight trousers.

"No quarter, remember?" Harry deliberately swiveled his hips, rubbing his crotch against Snape's cock. Snape's eyes went closed.

"No quarter," he murmured. His voice was tired and defeated. Then he broke Harry's hold and dragged him down into a breath-stealing kiss.

Melting, melting, melting. . . Snape's tongue was wicked, and Harry was melting like hot butter, dissolving in Snape's grasp. He gasped for air and looked down into blazing black eyes.

"I thought you wouldn't want me any more--wouldn't want me as a woman--"

"You thought wrong."

Harry gasped when Snape--did something, reversing their positions so that Harry was underneath. Harry was used to being slight, having speed and not strength as his advantage, but Severus had moved him so easily, just flipped him over like the cover of a book and pinned him down with hands on wrists and--oh, od!--hips between Harry's spread thighs. Harry tried to move and succeeded in verifying  
that Snape's railspike of a cock was pressed against his clit, and that there was no way he was going to dislodge the man from on top of him by brute strength.

Not that he *wanted* to. . . .

Severus was staring at him with a sort of triumphant smirk, as if he expected Harry to fight and knew that he couldn't possibly win. Harry decided to try a different tactic: surrender. He let his head sink back to the floor, his muscles go soft, his hands unclench, his eyes close. He wished he could see the look on Snape's face, but that would be cheating. And then he felt the cinnamon heat of Snape's breath against his lips and knew that he had won after all.

The kiss was longer and sweeter than any Harry had had from Severus before. It went on and on, while Harry's nipples strained against Snape's chest and his clit throbbed against the hard weight that shifted, infinitesimally but rhythmically, between his legs and his fingers curled and uncurled, waiting for their chance to slide up Severus' arms, into his hair, and down his back. Finally Severus pulled his mouth away, sighing, and then fastened onto that spot on Harry's neck, the one that always made him harder than a broomstick when Snape bit it. This time, the pleasure that lanced through Harry from the pressure of Snape's teeth was so intense that he moaned out loud--it was quite possibly an orgasm.

Snape's head jerked up. "Did I hurt you?"

Harry looked up into hot dark eyes frowning behind a curtain of stringy black locks, and laughed out loud. "No, of course not! I think you made me *come*. And I'd like you to do it again, if we can do it in bed the next time."

Severus froze for an instant, then shot to his feet, pulling Harry with him. Harry heard himself laughing as his lover simply picked him up--not like a bride about to be carried over the threshold, but more like an unconscious man being carried out of a burning building--and swept him away into the bedroom.

Severus dropped Harry onto the bed and dropped on top of him, getting one thigh between Harry's and diving in for more kisses. This time Harry's hands were free to roam, to cradle Snape's skull so he could have some leverage in their kissing, to comb through the long black hair until Severus snarled, always defensive, to run across the broad shoulders and down the long back until they closed around Snape's arse and pulled him closer. With a stifled moan, Severus began kissing his way down Harry's neck, onto his chest and down to the border of the green gown.

Harry started shivering when Snape, instead of looking for the zip or the laces or whatever, or just ripping the gown off (which had pleasantly crossed Harry's mind on his way to Snape's office), traced with his lips the curve of the neckline, brushing over the tops of Harry's breasts and breathing hotly into the gap between them. Snape traced from Harry's left shoulder to his right and from his right shoulder back again, back and forth and just nudging the neckline down a fraction, until Harry was ready to rip off the gown himself. But it was Hermione's gown, so he sat up, or tried to. 

"There's a zip--"

"I know all about zips, Potter." Snape's hand snaked under him and pulled it down. His lips never left Harry's skin as he did so, and Harry lay back and just let Severus work down the fabric with nose and chin until it lay across his ribcage, leaving his breasts exposed.

Snape propped himself on one elbow and appeared to consider Harry Potter's recently acquired assets. He touched one nipple and the other with a light fingertip, his mouth twitching at their quick response. He bent his head, and his lips resumed the course they had been taking earlier, meandering over Harry's bare skin until Harry was ready to scream, "Touch my nipples! Touch my nipples, dammit!"

Severus did so about two seconds before Harry would have *had* to scream. Harry sobbed, instead, as lips and then tongue saluted one nipple, while Snape's hard, blunt fingertips toyed with the other. Between one breath and another the pleasure went from languorous to frenzied; Harry would have thrashed like a landed fish had it not been for Snape's thigh pinning him down. He sobbed, panted, gasped, and finally outright screamed when Severus bit him, very carefully. *That* spike of sensation was definitely an orgasm. Snape raised his head and looked deliberately at Harry. Harry looked at Snape and then down at his own breasts, swollen like ripe grapes and topped with nipples that were flushed red from Snape's attention.

"Do you want me to push up your skirt, Harry, or do you want to take your clothes off?"

Harry blinked, trying to focus on the question. When he finally worked it out, he lifted his chin. "I'll take off my clothes if you will."

Severus held his gaze for a moment. "Very well." Snape sat up, keeping his eyes on Harry, and began undoing his cufflinks.

It would take Snape forever to undress, all those little links and buttons and catches. He could just undo them all with a muttered charm, but he never would; many the time he had stripped Harry and got him hard and needy, only to make him wait while he undressed one button at a time. Harry debated whether to keep his dress on, as a show of defiance, or whether just to be brazen and fling it off. He decided on brazen and wriggled out of it, pushing it down his legs and off onto the floor, to be followed by his knickers.

He gave Severus another defiant look before taking off his glasses and putting them on the nightstand. Severus was standing, having unbuttoned his jacket without shedding it and pulled his shirt out of his trousers. He was working his way down the buttons of his pants, watching Harry with what looked like satisfaction. "Take them *all* off," Harry said.

"If you wish," Severus replied, his tone suspiciously mild.

Without his glasses, Harry's world was a blur. But he could still make out when Severus was naked, all pale skin with black tufts at oxter and groin, and his prick standing out dark red against his belly. Had he ever looked at Severus so directly before, or Severus at him? It seemed like they'd always shagged without looking at each other, without meeting one another's eyes.

The bed dipped, and Harry lay back again, holding up his arms as Severus lay down on top of him. God, he didn't remember it feeling this good before, the contact of skin on skin; was it just that he'd never had it from Snape, or was his skin more sensitive now? He felt himself shudder as Severus kissed him again, lipps and throat and breasts and belly, and Severus was always warm, not cold as Harry had once imagined, not a serpent but a dragon with fire hidden deep inside. . . .

Harry forgot all comparisons and all previous encounters with sexual pleasure when those hot kisses descended into his cunt. Hermione had shown him the possibilities, but Severus. . . . Severus turned him inside out, ate him like a fruit, filled him like a cup and drank from him, emptied him out and started all over again. Harry's lashes fluttered, his breathing hitched, his thighs twitched and so did his hands, but nothing added up; all the fragments turned to ashes in the fire Snape kindled in him. He had thought it was heaven the first time Snape sucked him off; this time, he couldn't think because he was there, right where he had always wanted to be.

He didn't even feel the fingers that slipped inside him until they curled forward, pressing--something, and his hips curled up and his cunt demanded more. He opened his eyes and focused on the dark blur of Snape's hair. "Severus. Fuck me."

Snape bent and licked his clit, making Harry shriek. "Not yet."

Two fingers inside him, and then three, and the thumb on his clit, and it wasn't so different from getting ready to bottom as a man except that he kept *coming*, or thought he kept coming, and he never seemed to get tired, or stop wanting, and it felt so *good*, did it feel this good for all women, all the time? and he stopped asking questions when Severus suckled on his nipples again, mouth, fingers, please, please, please-- 

"Hold still, Harry," Severus said. "Hold still, and let me do it."

He was on his back, under Severus, legs spread, arms thrown over his head. Severus was leaning on one arm, gripping himself in the other hand. Harry felt the pressure were there had never been pressure before, in the opening where there had never been an opening before, and he bit his lip and breathed out and let Severus in, all the way in. Right there. Right there.

"Oh, GOD!"

Harry's head came up off the pillow and slammed back down. Those mysterious muscles inside were grabbing fiercely at the thing that hadn't used to be there, the hard hot long hard invasive hot wonderful thing that was Snape's cock, buried inside him. Snape was propped on his elbows, watching Harry's face as his thumbs tweaked Harry's nipples, and with every stroke, those muscles squeezed, squeezed, squeezed, and Harry wrapped his legs around Snape's narrow hips and locked him in.

"Fuck me. Right now."

"Very well."

Harry had often wondered, as he went up against Voldemort again and again, as he opposed Dark Magic with wit and courage and all that other good stuff, if there wasn't some Great Secret of the Universe, some truth that if only he knew it would allow him to defeat Voldemort once and for all, easily, painlessly, without anyone else dying. He had wondered and wondered, when he couldn't sleep, when he was fighting for his life and not sure he would prevail, when people were taken away from him. As Severus fucked him, as the delicious friction built inside him, as little touches to his nipples and his clit made the pleasure peak and peak and peak, he decided that there *was* a Great Secret of the Universe, which was that sex was better for women than for men, only no one would ever admit it. Was there a way that knowledge would help him defeat Voldemort?

Harry tossed his head and arched his back and pulled Severus down to kiss him breathless. "Fuck me, dammit," he hissed in Snape's ear. "Do it hard, like you used to. I won't break. No quarter!"

Groaning, Severus pulled away and planted his hands flat on the bed beside Harry's shoulders. Straightening his arms, he pulled out and slammed back in, *hard*, and Harry shouted "Yes!" and Severus did it again, and Harry's fingers went to his clit and then it was all red and green and silver and gold and the light, the incredible goddamned blinding light, until Severus threw back his head, groaning, and let go, hot and wet, Harry watching until Severus' head dropped onto his breasts.

***

He woke up a bit later, having to piss, and stumbled out to Snape's loo. "Are you all right?" asked Snape, when he came back. Snape was sitting on the edge of the bed, drawing on his trousers.

"I'm great, but where are you going?"

"We have a meeting with the Headmistress, Miss Granger, and the Weasley phalanx in about fifteen minutes. Or had you forgotten?"

Harry had. "Damn!" The mirror in the bathroom had shown him a generous sprinkling of love-bites and tiny bruises, not to mention a serious case of bed-head and somewhat chafed lips; it was more than fairly obvious that he had just been fucked within an inch of his life.

Snape was methodically dressing. "Unless you want the Weasley twins to sniff you over like a pair of scent-hounds after game, I suggest you allow me to perform a particular cleansing spell which you might not know."

"If you mean it's a spell that'll keep me from walking into the Headmistress's office looking freshly shagged, go at it."

Snape stood up, pulling his braces up over his narrow shoulders, and summoned his wand with "Accio." Striding toward Harry, he leveled his wand at Harry's chest and said, "Expurgatio!"

The effect was somewhat like going through a carwash without a car. Harry ducked back into the bathroom and verified that his skin was clear of any telltale marks, his hair tidy, and his lips smooth. Brilliant.

He dressed hastily, feeling as awkward now in his borrowed gown as if he still had a boy's body underneath it. He was all too aware that Snape, armored once again in his teaching robes, was watching him with an amused sort of appreciation of his body.

"Do you mind stopping staring at me like that?"

Snape stepped up behind him and pulled the gown closed. Hermione had helped him dress earlier. "If you'll stop waggling that fetching little bum of yours. Let's go."

Everyone else was already crowded into the Headmistress's office, drinking tea, when Harry and Snape arrived. No one batted an eyelash at their joint arrival, but Ron was still hiding from him, hovering behind the solid wall of Fred and George, and Bill raised his eyebrows at Harry's dress. Harry tried not to look for Fawkes, but his eyes always went to the spot where the perch where Dumbledore's phoenix had once rested. It was empty now; McGonagall's owl Finn must be out on an errand.

"Harry. Severus. Do sit down." A slight wave of her hand prompted the teapot to pour them each a cup; two lumps of sugar leaped into Harry's cup, and the milk pitcher hovered obligingly over it, while Snape's cup sped untainted to his hand. Harry sipped his tea and held the cup strategically in front of his bosom.

"Now, Bill, what do you and your brothers have to tell us?" McGonagall sat back in her chair.

"In a word, Headmistress, nothing." His brothers all bobbed their heads in agreement. "If I didn't know better, I'd say there *were* no more Death Eaters--that they'd all vanished."

Bill dropped a roll of parchment in front of McGonagall. "You'll want to go over the report yourself, of course, Headmistress, but I can give you the gist of it before you can finish your tea. The Ministry offices have been deserted. Knockturn Alley is empty. Durmstrang is still impenetrable, and Malfoy Manor and the homes of other families known to be loyal to Voldemort are still warded, but there's not any Death Eater activity to be *seen*, anywhere." He snagged a biscuit off the tea tray and sat down.

McGonagall frowned. So did Severus. Harry gulped his tea, and Hermione got up, rustling a sheaf of papers. 

"My researches into the Mulieribus Curse have been *very* interesting," the Weasleys sent up a collective groan, "but of course I'll spare you all the details because I know you don't want them. Suffice it to say that the Curse is a very ancient one, and it would certainly be classed among the Unforgivables if the present Ministry knew anything about it." Harry almost laughed as Hermione rather obviously suppressed some severe eye-rolling. "It was believed--in a less enlightened age than our own--that the mere experience of being turned into a woman was enough to, well, to *unman* an enemy and render him harmless. There is no equivalent Curse for turning a woman into a man, although there are of course applications of Transfiguration theory--"

"Hermione," said the Headmistress. It was enough to recall the younger woman to her point.

"Unfortunately, none of those applications will work in this case. It is, as far as I can judge, irreversible by the usual methods. It is, as one might guess, genetic, as Muggles would say--Harry hasn't been turned into just any woman, but into the woman he could have been, had he been born such. It is also one of the many Curses which can be removed only by the one who cast it." She looked at Harry. "I'm sorry, Harry. My conclusion is that you have essentially two choices: Learn to live as a woman, or confront the Dark Lord directly and induce him to remove the Curse."

When the meeting adjourned, Harry returned with Hermione to the rooms they shared. He sat down on his bed, hands clasped in his lap, and looked out the window. "Holiday is almost over," he observed. "I'll be back to coaching Quidditch soon." He snorted. "Like they'll pay any attention to me. They'll be too busy looking up my skirts."

Hermione had been putting away her research notes into her desk. She turned and looked at him with some surprise. "So bitter, Harry? I didn't think you found being a woman quite so bad."

"I don't really. I can do everything I used to, well, almost everything." He grinned. "If it were just me--" He thrust his glasses back up his face, wanting to hide from his friend. "If I have to stay a woman for life, people will treat me as even more of a freak than they already do. Ron won't even look at me." He bit his lip; he was *not* going to cry just because he had breasts now. "And Severus--" He broke off.

"Yes, what about Severus?" Hermione flopped down on her bed and propped her chin on her hands. With her inquisitive grin, she looked far more silly and girly than she ever had as a girl. "Did the gown I lent you do its job?"

"Oh, yes." He couldn't help smiling. "I've lost my virginity twice now, you could say--and I owe you for both times."

"Was it painful? Did you experience any discomfort?"

"No, actually. Hurt worse the first time he--but you probably don't want to hear about that."

"I get the picture. So he didn't turn you down just because you have tits now, eh? Didn't think he would." Hermione smiled wisely. "It's true love for certain."

"Oh, come off it." Harry flopped backwards onto the bed, sighing. "Yes, we shagged. Yeah, it was great. Okay, maybe Snape does care about me. But I'm still not very hopeful about spending the rest of my life as a woman."

Whatever Hermione might have said in response was lost to a sharp rap at the door and a familiar voice. "Potter? Miss Granger? It's Snape."

They looked at one another. Shrugging, Harry sat up and went to open the door.

"Ah, Potter. I wanted to speak with you after the meeting, but the Headmistress detained me. Would you be so good as to accompany me to my office?"

"Sure." Harry glanced over his shoulder. "See you at dinner then, Hermione." She winked as he closed the door.

They walked in silence from Hermione's room in Gryffindor tower to Snape's office in the dungeons. Snape's presence seemed to avert prying eyes and gaping mouths; Harry was grateful both for Snape's presence and for his distance, as he kept himself at arm's length. Only when the office door was closed and freshly warded behind them did Snape's posture relax a little. 

"Potter. Harry." Snape pinched the bridge of his nose with white fingers. "About earlier--"

"Don't apologize, if you were going to." Harry sat down, uninvited, in the armchair by the fireplace. "I seduced you. You ravished me. A splendid time was had by all. End of discussion."

Snape gave him a look which once would have had Harry reaching for his wand; now, Harry merely smiled in return. Snape apparently gave up and sat down on the nearby bench.

"I suppose you were afraid our--trysts would come to an end on account of your change in sex."

"I thought they might," Harry agreed coolly.

Snape looked into the fire and was silent. Harry waited. "It's a curious fact," Snape went on, "that the House most concerned with breeding and bloodline is also the House most likely to attract homosexual wizards." Half a smile lifted the corner of his mouth. "Slytherin boys and Ravenclaw girls--they only play with themselves, so goes the joke. But most Slytherins are only too aware of the necessity to continue the family line. You will probably laugh to hear that I was once engaged to be married."

Harry's mouth fell open and hung slack for a bit before he managed to make an answer to this revelation. "I'm not laughing. But I am bloody surprised."

"As most of your peers would be." Snape poked with his wand at the fireplace, stirring up the coals. "Her name was Juliana Fellwood and she was in Ravenclaw. Like me, she was Pureblooded but poor, with no distinctions to boast of in her lineage. Our marriage meant a future for us and a profit for the person who brokered the union--in our case, Narcissa Malfoy." Snape scowled at the flames, which shot up green and purple. "Juliana was foolish enough to get involved with Voldemort along with me. She was wise enough to see through him before I did, but not wise enough to deceive him successfully. She died a few months before your parents did."

Snape looked straight at Harry, his face expressionless. "It was an arranged marriage, but we became--very close. In fact, she was carrying my child when she died."

Harry suddenly felt an urge to cover up his exposed bosom. "I'm sorry. I never knew--"

"You were never meant to." Snape sighed. "In any case, our present problems are sufficiently pressing that we need not dwell on the more maudlin aspects of my personal history. Headmistress McGonagall and I were discussing the possibility of exploiting the link which you had, or have, with Voldemort."

Harry sat up straight. Typical of Snape to leap from the intimate to the strategic with no smooth segue in between. "No. Not that."

"We cannot induce him to lift the Curse unless we know where he is. We cannot resolve the situation unless we know where he is. The Headmistress and I have agreed that it is feasible, under controlled conditions, for you to access your connection with him."

"'Controlled conditions' meaning what?"

"Here in my office, under my supervision and my wards."

"I thought that's what it meant," Harry muttered.

They sat in silence for a while, both brooding as they watched the flames dance in the hearth. Despite the fire, Harry felt cold and wished he had had time to change out of his borrowed gown before Snape dragged him off. He also felt... not *sore* precisely but aware of his insides, aware that a part of him that hadn't existed for very long had recently experienced some new sensations.

He shifted in the chair and discovered his upper back had got stuck to the leather. "I'll do it," he said. "Just let me go change out of this dress."

***

When Harry returned to Snape's office, wearing his teaching robes over jeans and jumper and towing Hermione behind him, Snape was preparing for the work at hand. Pine-smelling torches now burned on the walls; Snape was walking clockwise about the room, reinforcing his wards. He pointed his wand first at the walls, then at the corners, then at the ceiling and floor, strengthening the existing wards and overlaying them with new ones, until the air in the room grew almost too dull and heavy to breathe. Harry wondered if he'd be able to link with Voldemort in the midst of so many spells designed to keep things like him out.

Snape came back to the hearth, tucking his wand into his sleeve. "Potter, you and Miss Granger shall sit here." He indicated the two armchairs. "I will stand nearby. And I will have your wand, Potter, just in case."

Harry nodded. If Voldemort somehow took control of the link, he might be able to force Harry to harm Snape and Hermione, or worse. He took out his wand, handed it over to Snape, and sat down in the armchair on the right. Hermione took the other chair, perching on the edge of the horsehair seat.

"We're ready to begin when you are, Potter." Snape positioned himself behind Harry's chair to the right and folded his arms, wand in hand. 

Harry leaned back in the chair and reached up to touch his scar. It all started and ended with this scar, didn't it? He traced its ridges with a fingertip, frowning. The Mulieribus Curse had erased the correction spells on his vision and given him a brand-new woman's body based on his own genetic code. Yet it had not erased the lightning-bolt scar, the result of the first Curse Voldemort had cast his way. It was as if bearing that scar was somehow in his genetic code, was part of his intrinsic nature. As if the wretched prophecy that had led Voldemort to attack his parents might not have fallen on Neville as well as on Harry. Well, Neville, too, had paid his price.

He rubbed at the scar more firmly, with his thumb. Every time Voldemort was active, the scar hurt. The more active the Dark Lord was, the more pain Harry felt. For the first time it occurred to him that the scar had *not* hurt in the slightest since their confrontation at the solstice. Hidden under his fringe, it had lain dormant, nothing more than a forgotten blemish, while he adjusted to his new body and to the new experiences that came with it. He could still feel the little aftershocks of sex, earlier....

Sighing, he pushed aside *those* thoughts and let himself relax. Let himself drop the carefully erected barriers in his mind, built with toil and travail to keep Voldemort out. Let that inner eye open which saw with such discomforting clarity into Voldemort's mind, Voldemort's soul--if he had one. One moment he was staring hard at the red insides of his eyelids, at the flicker of the firelight beaming through his skin; the next moment he was looking through eyes not his own into--another fireplace.

What sort of fireplace, then? Harry willed the eyes he was looking through to show some interest and look around. As far as he could see, it was quite a large fireplace, larger than the one in Snape's office, massive and carved of black marble. The eyes that he was looking through refused, however, to look up at the carvings and the figures they made, so Harry looked at the floor instead. It was inlaid with colored tiles in a pattern, a mosaic--and not an abstract pattern but a picture; he willed the eyes to stay looking at it long enough for him to identify the image. Black, white, green, crimson--crimson serpents intertwined with green vines on  
a checked ground.

There were two black feet on the floor, interrupting the pattern of the mosaic. Long narrow feet in black slippers with pointed toes. Black robes fell over narrow shins and trailed over the black-slippered feet; knobby knees thrust out through the folds of the robe. There were hands resting on those knees--Harry looked at them as if they were his own. They were the hands of an old person: slim hands with large knuckles, twisted by arthritis and spotted with age.

Harry watched those hands stretch themselves out, slowly, painfully, toward the fire--and then snap back into their sleeves like a serpent recoiling after a strike. Serpent. Serpent. Wait--those were not the scaly gray reptilian hands he remembered from his previous encounters with Voldemort. They were human hands, elderly hands, aged but as normal as his own.

Instinctively, Harry looked down at his own hands--and with that shift of consciousness, the mind he had been exploring felt him, knew him, and turned on him, striking out.

The shifting red tones of the fire blurred until they filled his vision, blurred and went green with Voldemort's rage. He knew nothing until Snape's voice cut like a cold knife through his fugue state.

"Potter! Potter, come out of it! Harry, do you hear me?"

He managed to focus, despite a splitting headache, and saw Hermione kneeling before him, and his lap full of blood. He promptly passed out.

***

"It's not like that every time, Harry, I swear."

Hermione was holding his hand. Snape was nearby, holding his wand and pacing.

"Indeed it is not." Madame Pomfrey sounded indignant. "Whatever--*malice* your opponent directed toward you brought on a rather catastrophic haemorrhage, not a true menses at all." She took Harry's other hand and felt for his pulse. "Although you were certainly due for one."

He felt weak, helpless, and sick, with a headache that was enough all by itself to make him vomit up his last day's meals. He also felt as though someone had pulled out his plug, and all the energy in him was trickling down the drain. He was certain he could *feel* the blood trickling out of him onto the bulky thing between his legs, compounded of herbs and crystals and whatnot. He could vaguely remember Hermione telling him all about it while she held his hair back and he doubled over the basin.

On the other hand, he had learned something crucial about Voldemort... if he could just remember what it was. If only Snape would stop glaring at him! And pacing. The black robes went swish, swish, and Snape's heels rang on the floor, plat, plat, and Harry thought he might throw up again just watching Snape fret.

"Severus!" He drew himself up and raised an eyebrow at Madame Pomfrey. "If you're going to pace like that, do it outside. Harry's turning green as a Slytherin."

The other eyebrow went up and joined its neighbor in one of Snape's best sneers. Harry laughed, very weakly, and instantly regretted it. His stomach muscles hurt too much.

"Harry Potter! On your back in the infirmary again?"

The Headmistress swirled into the room and pulled up a chair. There was something bracing about McGonagall's presence, like a draught of fresh cool mountain air, that made Harry feel fractionally better. He tried to sit up, but the relaxing potion Madame Pomfrey had administered was turning his muscles to goo.

"Don't bother trying to sit up, Harry--just tell me what you know, briefly, so I can leave you to recuperate."

He rubbed at his forehead--his scar was still aching from his contact with Voldemort. "I think I know why Voldemort has been in hiding. I think I know where he is. And I think he's going to come here."

***

Hermione finally went away after repeated assurances on her part that one's menstrual period was *not* like the haemorrhage he had just experienced and repeated assurances on his part that the potions were starting to work and he was doing better. Harry was just beginning to fall asleep when he realized that Snape had returned and was sitting in a corner, silent as a shadow.

"Sev--"

"Don't call me that."

"Go away." He licked dry lips. "I mean, it's okay. I'm okay. You can go chop shrivelfigs or, you know."

"I would rather stay here, thank you."

It was difficult to turn his head and look at the shadow in the corner, like moving through room-temperature porridge. "Why?"

The shadow moved, too quickly for him to see, and became a cool hand on his sweaty forehead and a familiar twisted scowl peering down at him. "Don't you know, Potter? Must you make me say it?"

"Yes," Harry started to say, but before he could hear Severus's answer, he was asleep.

***

He wasn't sure, later, who woke him with the words, "They're coming." He didn't have to know who told him; he knew who "they" were and what was meant.

It was completely dark, the darkness of three a.m., hardly broken by the torches and lanterns shining everywhere. Sleepy-eyed students were crowding the halls as Harry, still pulling on his robes over his unzipped jeans, fled the infirmary wand-first, tugged along by his scar. It felt as if a hot wire were attached to his forehead at one end and to Voldemort at the other, and the wire was getting shorter all the time. At some point in his passage to the main entrance, he simply dropped his robes behind him and took a moment to stop and zip up his jeans; it was still embarrassing even if you didn't have a prick to peek out down there.

By the time he ran down the main staircase, people were converging on the front doors; students were crying, teachers were shouting, the school ghosts were buzzing about overhead. Harry grasped his wand more firmly and looked for either Snape's black head or Hermione's burst of curls.

"Potter!"

No mistaking that call, like a knife thrown at him. He hurried to Severus's side and found McGonagall, Hermione, and Neville also there, with the Weasleys fighting their way through the press to get near them.

"They're nearly here," was all Snape said as Harry drew up beside him. Harry peered out the half-open doors into the darkness.

"It's like a bloody Frankenstein movie," he muttered.

A mass of hooded figures carrying blazing torches and wands that glowed greenish-white were advancing on the castle. Unlike the mob in a Frankenstein movie, however, they were silent, all noise suppressed. Harry folded his arms and waited, hearing the breathing of his friends all around him. Snape, breathing loudly through his nose with lips compressed. Hermione, gasping softly, her chest rising and falling as it did during sex. Neville sniffling occasionally, but stalwart, biting his lip. McGonagall tapping her foot and drawing air to its fourfold pattern, four beats in, four beats held, four beats out, four beats held. Fred and George, breathing in tandem. Ron, panting. He turned and looked at his recently absent friend.

"Why, Ronald Weasley, fancy meeting you here."

A magically projected voice cut across whatever Ron might have said. "Potter, come out here!"

Lucius Malfoy, pretending to be the voice of God. Harry flicked his eyes at Severus, Hermione, shouldered his way between them, and trotted down the front steps. Trotting reminded him he hadn't put his bloody bra back on, ow. Oh, well--if he died unsupported, so be it.

He stopped at the bottom of the steps and folded his arms again. "I know you're out there, Riddle, and I want to talk to *you*, not to Lucius or Draco or any of your other hangers-on."

There was a stir amidst the Death Eaters--an argument, suddenly suppressed? A single figure in black emerged from the crowd and began inching its way forward, leaning on a cane.

Harry waited. Let everyone behind him, inside the doors of Hogwarts, and everyone out there, in the faceless crowd, see the slow progress of the creature that came out to meet him, leaning so heavily on the cane that it pricked deep holes in the turf. Hobbling feebly as if each step were agony.

Harry waited until the shrouded figure stopped, only a few feet away. One step of his would bring them toe-to-toe. The wizard lights and torches of the Hogwarts people behind cast his shadow forward; it overlapped with the shadow of the other, cast forward by the torches and wizard lights of the Death Eaters.

"The Curse worked, as you can see. Want proof?" In a moment of mischief, he pulled up his jumper, showing the small high breasts he had gotten used to in the past few weeks. There were cries of outrage and stifled laughter. That'll be a headline for tomorrow's Prophet, he thought: GIRL WHO LIVED FLASHES DARK LORD.

"What, no reaction?" He tried to peer through the shadows, see into the depths of the black hood. "Feeling surprised, are we? Did you expect me to go hide in a corner with a veil over my head?" He waited, suppressing his grin. "Like you?"

Murmurs all around them, from Hogwarts folk and Death Eaters alike. Harry took half a step forward, peering stubbornly into the darkness within the hood. "Come on, then. It's true, isn't it? The Curse rebounded, just like your first one did. You can't touch me, not without touching yourself." He lifted up his fringe to show off the scar, which was throbbing more slowly and more powerfully than his heart--a sure sign of the truth. "I've still got the scar, you see. I'm still *me*, Harry Potter. It doesn't matter what you do to my plumbing. I'm still me. You haven't killed me yet, and you haven't set me back by turning me into a woman. But what about *you*?"

The dark figure lifted a hand--the same twisted, age-spotted, but very human hand Harry had seen in his vision. There was a shout from someone, perhaps Lucius Malfoy, but a jerk of the lifted hand cut it off. Then the aged hand moved to the deep black hood, fumbled with the heavy cloth, and pushed it back.

Harry was probably the only person who did not gasp. He took in the wispy white hair, the nearly-bald patches of scalp, the dry and wrinkled features without reacting. He waited, calm, as the woman who used to be Tom Riddle struggled out of the voluminous black robe and let it fall, revealing a withered, fragile female body dressed in a shapeless, shabby robe Molly Weasley wouldn't have worn to muck out a stable with a shovel.

"It rebounded." The voice was a cracked soprano, too broken to hiss. "Oh, yes, it rebounded. Malfoy hid me away. Hid the truth while he ruled in my name. Convinced me I was *disgraced*, unfit to be seen or heard." The rage in that hag's croak made Harry's scar throb more fiercely. "Me, Lord Voldemort. The greatest dark wizard the world has ever known. *Disgraced!*" Harry winced at that piercing shriek. Then he winced again as Voldemort turned with shocking speed and aimed his wand at Lucius Malfoy.

"Avada Kedavra!"

Being turned into a woman hadn't impaired Voldemort's powers any more than it had impaired Harry's. Lucius Malfoy dropped like a stone, hit very accurately by the green fire of the curse, and Narcissa followed him, having stepped in front of her son as Voldemort cast the Killing Curse a second time.

The Dark Lord remained turned away, almost with his back to Harry. Deciding it was now or never, Harry sprang and grabbed hold of Voldemort's arm. The old woman struggled, but magic or no magic, Harry was a healthy young woman with an exercise regime, and Voldemort a frail old woman whose plans for immortality had been drastically undone; sheer physical strength prevailed, and Harry was able to keep his grasp and look his opponent in the face.

"End this," Harry urged. "Let's end it now. You take the Curse off me, I'll take it off you--

"No!"

"--and let *go*. You'd be in a lot better shape right now if you hadn't tried so hard to live forever."

Voldemort struggled, his sunken lips working. Disgusted, Harry tightened his hold and twisted Voldemort's wand out of his hand. He held it up, letting everyone see, and then broke it in half.

"All right. I'm betting you can still lift the Curse *without* your wand, Miss Greatest-Dark-Wizard-the-World-Has-Ever-Known. But if you can't, I'm prepared to live out my days as a woman. Are you?" 

Something flickered in the dark eyes that seared Harry's. Then Voldemort's head drooped. "You have won, Potter. Kill me, if you will."

"Lift the Curse. I'll lift it from you and you can at least die as you lived, a man."

"Death will not hold me, even if the Killing Curse destroys me."

"Yeah, whatever." Harry leveled his wand--the twin of Voldemort's--at the Dark Lord. "Lift the Curse. Or find out if the Killing Curse does kill you."

Voldemort was silent. Behind him the Death Eaters shifted and muttered, but no one interfered. At last Voldemort stretched out his hand, almost touching Harry's chest. Harry focused on his wand and opened his mind to the link between them.

Both women spoke the words of reversal as one. "Vir in viribus esto te!"

***

"Welcome back, *Mr.* Potter."

Harry's eyelids seemed to be stuck together. He remembered speaking the words of the counter-curse, and the same kick-in-the-groin sensation and wash of violet light as on the solstice day battle. He heard the emphasis in Snape's voice--and the amusement beneath it--and tried to move his arm.

He succeeded. His hand settled on a familiar bulge at his groin.

"Thank God," he muttered.

The answering peal of laughter could only be Hermione's. "Typical man! I thought you didn't mind being a girl, Harry?"

He managed to rub his eyes and unstick his lids enough to look up and see Hermione grinning, Severus mock-scowling. 

"I didn't miss them so much, really. . . but I'm still glad they're back."

She bent and kissed his forehead. "If you're glad, I'm glad. Now I've got to go tell the Headmistress you're awake."

She receded. Snape moved closer, sitting down beside the hospital bed.

"What happened?"

"You and Voldemort mutually lifted the Curse from one another. Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy are dead, killed by their lord. Draco and quite a lot of other Death Eaters are in custody. Young Mr. Crabbe and Mr. Goyle were the first to turn themselves in and offer to talk. They've already named an impressive number of names."

Snape fell silent, gazing at Harry. Harry passed his hand over his scar. Yes, still there. "And Voldemort?"

"Dead." Snape's flat voice rang with hidden triumph. "Undoing the Curse undid him as well. Turned to dust like a vampire making love with a stake." Harry laughed at the morbid metaphor and clutched his stomach. He felt like his insides had been turned out and beaten like a dusty rug.

"So. . . it's really over. We've won."

"Yes, we've won. In the same sense that we won after Grindelwald was defeated and Hitler committed suicide. There's still the devil of a lot of work to be done, rebuilding what was damaged." Snape sighed. Harry fumbled for the other man's hand and found it.

"We can do it."

Snape stood up, squeezed Harry's hand, and to his surprise, bent over and kissed him very lightly on the lips. "Yes, Mr. Potter, I suppose we can. If the Boy Who Lived can not only destroy the Dark Lord, but survive being a woman for two weeks, he can do anything."

"Maybe even make you fall in love with me," Harry whispered, to Snape's retreating back.

McGonagall was the next to visit, with Hermione by her side and a red-faced Ron Weasley tagging behind them. So everything was back to normal again. He thought about that kiss Severus had just given him, and about Voldemort willingly lifting the Curse. Who knows? Maybe *better* than normal.


End file.
